With President Barack Obama’s approval rating hovering at a certain ledge in public opinion polling — at 50 percent this week in the Gallup Poll’s daily tracking, the fourth time since late August that Obama has slid to that personal low in the Gallup track — the organization says the president also has set a record in first-year edges lost.

After nine months in office, the president’s slide in public approval for the job he is peforming dropped from an average of 62 percent during his second quarter in office to 53 percent during his third quarter — the biggest drop from second to third quarter in the first year of any presidency that Gallup has been trackng since Harry Truman’s time.

« Obama’s 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office, » Gallup’s Jones adds. « The highest is Truman’s 19-point drop between his third and fourth quarters, followed by a 15-point drop for Gerald Ford between his first and second quarters. The largest for an elected president in his first year is Bill Clinton’s 11-point slide between his first and second quarters. »

Gallup’s Jones adds this: « Obama’s 53% third-quarter average is substandard from a broader historical perspective that encompasses all 255 presidential quarters for which Gallup has data going back to 1945. On this basis, Obama’s most recent average ranks 144th, or in the 44th percentile, clearly below average not just for presidents’ third quarters but for all presidents. »